Praise

From Library Journal

When Emily Dickinson wrote "There is no Frigate like a Book," she acknowledged what most readers take as fact: literature can and usually does "take us Lands away." Pearson has done what we would like to do. Armed with a solid understanding of the work of Frost, Faulkner, O'Connor, Hemingway, Twain, and Steinbeck, he set out to visit the physical sites these authors used to shape their literary geographies. The journey makes for interesting reading, although now and then bits of amateurish analysis distracts from his valuable observations on the creative process. However, this sturdy ship is sure to be seaworthy. Recommended. (Photos not seen.)-- Vincent D. Balitas, Allentown Coll., Center Valley, Pa.Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

ABOUT MICHAEL PEARSON

Michael Pearson teaches creative writing and American literature at Old Dominion University. He has published essays and stories in The Boston Globe, The Baltimore Sun, The Atlanta Journal and Constitution, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Southern Literary Journal, Shenandoah Review, and Creative Nonfiction, among many others. He is the author of five nonfiction books - Imagined Places: Journeys into Literary America (1991 -- listed as a notable book by The New York Times Book Review), A Place That's Known: Essays (1994), John McPhee (1997), Dreaming of Columbus: A Boyhood in the Bronx (1999) and, most recently, Innocents Abroad Too (2008), which recounts two journeys around the world by ship on the Semester at Sea Program. Pearson has also written a novel, Shohola Falls (2003), a coming-of-age narrative that imagines the hidden life of Mark Twain and the journal of Thomas Blankenship, the real-life Huck Finn. Willie Morris, the former editor of Harper's said, "Michael Pearson is one of our nation's finest memoirists."